I’m tired of apologising for being a man. I’m tired of accepting that abuse is a male characteristic. I’m tired of the fact that all the men I know are afraid of being accused at any moment. I’m saddened that men have withdrawn in vast numbers from childcare and primary teaching. I’m sick of being portrayed as a potential rapist and a possible violent attacker.

I’m sick of it. Just like Peter Finch in Network, I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take this anymore.

These nuns who abused the Magdalene slaves. Were they men?

No they were not. They were women. Vicious, emotionally-deranged, vindictive, sexually-obsessed women. Not men, though it’s true that just as many men are capable of committing evil.

Can we begin to abandon this horrible portrayal of men that sprang from a particular strand of academic feminism, an ideology whose main purpose was to create PhDs for a generation of cynics? Can we walk away from the sort of people who claim that Margaret Thatcher was an honorary man, and can we begin to reclaim the sane middle ground where people are just people, and neither men nor women are evil?

Do you think we could agree that some people are disposed to commit wrong but that most people are inclined towards kindness? Could we agree that men, for the most part, are just as decent and kind as women, and could we leave all those screwed-up people over there in a corner on their own, all those men, women and soulless academics who hurt others?

They don’t belong to my world, to the people I know and love, any more than they belong to yours, so let’s take the power away from them, the power to stereotype you and me. In my world, people are flawed, fragile, weak, fallible but ultimately well-intentioned. They aren’t crazy abusers or violent lunatics. They’re just decent people doing their best to get on with their lives, look after their families and do the best they can for the people they care about.

In the real world, nobody but a fool would design a skyscraper to withstand an asteroid strike, yet that’s precisely what we’re doing with our society because we are so in thrall to the PC-driven cynical academics who have grabbed us by the throat. Instead of planning for the things we might reasonably expect to happen, our society is these days being geared to resist the most outlandish, paranoid, illogical fallacies capable of being generated by a politically-correct academic cohort intent on looking after its own corner.

Two assumptions are necessary.

All men are potential abusers, but abusive women are simply honorary men.

It’s possible to protect against all risks.

Both of these assumptions are complete nonsense, as any thinking human being will tell you. The Sisters of Mercy and the Sisters of Charity and the Good Shepherd Sisters are abusers by anyone’s standards. And if you could protect against all risks, we’d have no more illness in the world, no plane would ever crash, and no castle would ever have fallen to the enemy.

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35 Responses to “The Fallacy of Male and Female Evil”

I think there are some people who are predisposed towards meta-narratives, they make life simpler, the world gets neatly divided into good guys and bad guys, solutions are clear.

For centuries, Catholicism provided that meta-narrative, there was no need to think. The Protestant Reformation didn’t so much provide an alternative as provide different groups saying similar things. With the decline of religion, capitalism and communism became the big stories, then communism ceased to be a viable option, so those who disliked the capitalist account of reality needed a new story to give their lives meaning. Radical feminism was one of the alternatives that presented itself – the evil in the world is due to patriarchy, in fact, the whole of human history has been shaped by the evil of patriarchy.

When people try to foist their meta-narratives on me, I find the best response is asking, ‘who says that is so? Who gave them authority to say what was right and what was wrong?’ The answers I get are usually circular.

Who is asking you to apologize for being a man?
If men are more likely to be the physical abusers than the abused can you see how the narrative is as it is.
Traditionally power has by and large been in male hands. Power has been abused.
You point out that the sisters were women and there was abuse. Yes. They had power and they abused it.
However, the “rescuer” in the case of the Magdalenes was a male family member. So the person who held the key to freedom was the male.
I’m sorry for your persecution. It sounds like a terrible life. Now excuse me while I
make sure my dress is not short so I’m not asking for rape, get my errands run while there’s light so it’s not my own fault that I’m attacked, plan my route so it’s well lit and populated (even though that has proven to be of little use often) and other such bullshit minutiae that fills my underpaid life. Meta-narrative my well-covered arse

: to harass or punish in a manner designed to injure, grieve, or afflict; specifically: to cause to suffer because of belief
to annoy with persistent or urgent approaches (as attacks, pleas, or importunities)

I’m tired of apologising for being a man. I’m tired of accepting that abuse is a male characteristic. I’m tired of the fact that all the men I know are afraid of being accused at any moment. I’m saddened that men have withdrawn in vast numbers from childcare and primary teaching. I’m sick of being portrayed as a potential rapist and a possible violent attacker.

I’m sick of it. Just like Peter Finch in Network, I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take this anymore
……………I’d say you outlined persecution

Easht Galway Woman, my ex-girlfriend never asked me to apologise for being a man. However, whilst fretting about an offer I once made to take care of her young son while she went to attend a dental appointment I inquired as to what the problem might be. “but you’re a man” be blurted. “So…?”, says I.

Bock Men don’t have feelings. The last thing you want to do is to be seen to have feelings, when its obvious men don’t have any. Unless of course you are a gay man. Then you are allowed to possess some level of feelings. But in the main these would be attributed to you being in touch with your feminine side.

The idea that those who lack power have some sort of extra moral virtue, is as much a fallacy as the idea that those who have power are in some way especially evil.

Feminism, in my view, is about identifying a particular aspect & nuance of the flow of power within society. It is not about identifying virtue with femaleness or evil with maleness.

Yes, I believe there is a phenomenon called patriarchy, by means of which gender differences are heightened in order to maintain certain power relations, which hurt all of us, and restrict all of us from being, as you say, Bock, just the regular people we would be without such interference.

I do not believe men are particularly prone to being abusive, nor that women are immune from abusive tendencies… just that, as it happens, those men who do have abusive tendencies (evidentially something around 5-6%) have an edge, and the ability to do a lot more damage than their numbers would suggest. And those women who have abusive tendencies (probably similar in numbers) often thrive in pockets where there is a patriarchal underpinning of authority – patriarchal religion in the case of the nuns. Lacking at backing of institutional power, there is less of a social weighting favouring/sheltering abusive women. Less power, not more moral virtue. That is all.

The idea that all men are abusive, and women somehow immune, is yet another way that patriarchy sets the genders at one anothers throats.

I am a feminist, but I am not on board with that notion. My experiences of men and women are too varied to accept any such characterisations.

And yet, patriarchy still rules…and divides… which is why I continue to be a feminist.

I don’t think you could have expressed the demonization of men any better Bock. Women are as capable of cruelty and evil as men; perhaps their execution is a little more sophisticated and usually better hidden.Today the Independent (UK) has an article concerning a midwife Amelia Dyer who is thought to have murdered up to 300 babies.
As an aside, one would expect that as certain people oriented professions such as teaching and medicine are taken over by women, we should see a softening of delivery; a more caring experience for service users.We don’t. We see an improvement in protocols, procedures, audit trails and perceived accountability but that is unlikely to translate into substantive improvements in service; it’s an exercise in covering one’s own ass. The real focus for the modern female-led service providers is as it ever was; in their own home nests–that is the true focus of their endeavors for which evolution has hardwired them. My personal belief is that males do altruism more readily than women but that women do PR and PC better than men. Perhaps I am wrong.

I agree, that having an abusive nature is not confined to men only.
I also think that men have feelings (who would have thought!) . We all bleed.

Also feminism isn’t about bashing men, but more about fighting for womens’ right – equality of pay/power. As we live in a male dominated society, where positions of power are held by men (i.e; politics, business) – for whatever reason, we have feminists whose agenda is to push for more equality for women.

I agree completely that feminism isn’t about bashing men, and that’s why I was careful to mention a particular strand of academic feminism. Perhaps I should have gone a step further and spoken about people who use the term feminism to disguise an entirely different agenda.

See, the meme that *All Men Are Beasts* is one that hurts individual men, very much so. Hence your eloquent post.

But it is not, repeat NOT, a meme that hurts patriarchy one bit… in fact it may well be one of patriarchy’s oldest & proudest inventions, long pre-dating any feminists whose main fault here would be to be insufficiently critical of it.

Why? Because IF all men are beasts, THEN it falls to women to police their own sexuality, to suppress any of their own sexual desires & to be responsible for both their own actions and those of men (eg never “get yourself” pregnant – sic). Even worse it falls to women to suppress any urge for equality (or “uppityness” as rendered by google-translate for patriarquish speakers), for fear of unleashing the beast.

This *All Men Are Beasts* meme is incredibly old. It gives us the burka & the whole notion of female modesty generally. It giives us the categories of good girls (who can tame that one special beast, get him to buy her a ring & flowers on Valentines Day) v sluts, who will get down & dirty with any beast. It gives us rape juries who understand a beast can be provoked by almost anything a woman might do & that a beast will be a beast, so it wasn’t really rape…

Yes, Bock, I agree this meme, which holds us so firmly in its grip, is incredibly damaging to us all, as I’ve outlined. And its collateral damage is the way it makes it so much harder to see what is right in front of our eyes when it doesn’t fit the meme – such as male nurturing & caring, or female abuse & violence.

But, I think you are mistaken about the origin of the meme and the institutions from which it derives its enduring, decency-altering influence. This is a central meme of patriarchy & it needs dismantling, for us all to be both free & equal.

All men are beasts; men are beasts because women say they are beasts; men can’t change; men usually don’t do what women want; what women want is how things should be; men should behave; we need to make new laws so that men always do what women want. Women can’t be beasts . They are too pretty and nice to do anything bad. They care for people and are soft and loving. I have been reprogrammed. Thank you.

yes, I remember the millions upon millions of men who used to work in childcare, and primary school teaching and who have not left. NOT.

I remember the millions upon millions of men marching against the rape and sexual assault, and domestice violence perpetuated in the main by men, millions of them marching and demanding that this violence perpetuated upon their mothers, sisters, daughters, wives etc be stopped. NOT.

I remember a time when feminists ran the world, and the cunning academic ones who took over universities and invented degrees for wimmen. NOT.

De poor menz, being bullied by de nasty feminazis. Time to wrench yourselves away from Call of Duty, and Grand Theft Auto, (those cuddly family friendly,anti feminist games, and go out marching again. What’s that you say, theres rugby/football/gaa on the box, ok, postpone the revolution and get the dutch gold in instead.

I am of the same generation as young Bock and feel his pain too. Perhaps, in another beastly warlike meme, we are the necessary innocent victims in this last concluding gender battle, the collateral damage in an endgame feminist offensive, the stereotypical, doubly abused, Palestinian woman and child victim of the feminist, beast argument. Doe-eyed dinosaurs in the path of the final feminist meteorite,

Perhaps we are the sic. ageing male members in a historical, correcting gender swing occurring now .

And here’s a thing, I remember once engaging with this wonderful English teacher about Virginia Woolf’s shortened story ” The Yellow Dress ” ( I think it was called ). And in the literary debate, the author herself spoke about ” the feminine sentence ” , the sentence which could only have come from a female hand , from a feminine insight , from a female perspective. I felt excluded and it wasn’t me getting in touch with my feminine side.

Patriarchy is not the rule of men, per se, but the rule of the fathers… the rule of old, wealthy powerful men. They need testosterone-powered, risk-taking young men to fight their wars for them. They need women, tied to their wombs and homes producing another generation of cannon fodder. I

If the diminished mothers take it out on the sons, or the stoked up sons take it on the mothers and daughters, this doesn’t hurt patriarchy. The fathers still own us all & have already twisted us, men and women alike, to shape us for their own ends.

We need to understand this truly, & find allies in one another, not enemies.

Old wealthy powerful men frequently go together with …young pretty women; each a sad status symbol for the other. Men use women and women use men. Evolutionary psychologists might argue that the power play is brought about by the perceived drive to attract a mate and that this drive is heavily influenced by the powerful weighting that females place on the economic success of any prospective mate.Nothing changes. The nest must be feathered well.

These patriarchy guys sound like the Illuminati. Since we’re talking about rich people, where do extremely wealthy or powerful women fit in? Are they honorary men for the purposes of the discussion, as somebody once told me Golda Meir, Margaret Thatcher and Indira Gandhi were? Is Angela Merkel a man? How about Christine Lagarde, head of the IMF?

And if we’re talking about old rich people, the queen of England seems to fit the bill as do Liliane Bettencourt (24 bn) and Anne Cox Chambers (12 bn). Are they all cross dressers?

You advocate all of us sticking it to the man, which is very fine by me.
,
My concern, which Bock is probably pointing at too, is that THE man is well… a man and why should this be. The Magdalene’s were gals as were those fuck off wealthy females Bock mentioned.

But I’m with you on this one – the intuitions, the status quo , the societal inertia and resistance to change which favours the few over the many .

And your point might be that those who are involved in the continuance of such perversion are the patriarchy.

I still reserve my victim’s right of being a doe eyed dinosaur though.

I’m still with you Bock. All the puff and smoke is really about Men being bashed. With sons out working and the social pressures from the women in their lives, they take it on the chin for all the sins of the fathers. I’m tired of men being bashed. Their portrayal even in commercials is sickening. Take a look at “You look like a clown” in the commercial. The thing I’m grateful for is his silent resistance. So to all the men out there my message is Be Proud. Most men I know are too kind.

I listened to Olivia on the way home the other evening.
She made a lot of sense up to a point. But the self loathing created by society that feared and hated women, whom she states created the female monsters that ran the laundries, was only a smoke screen for what she really meant. She really meant that these monsters were the creation of women hating men. Its time women faced the facts that there are women out there in our shared society that do not need any help from their fathers, uncles, brothers or sons, to be just as evil as some men in our shared society.

God had a similar attitude to yourself.
They saw how things were shaping up and decided to get tough with the reprobates.
It happened during the construction of the tower of Babel.
True story apparently.

“Can we begin to abandon this horrible portrayal of men that sprang from a particular strand of academic feminism, an ideology whose main purpose was to create PhDs for a generation of cynics?” any chance of giving some examples of these published thesis and by whom??? this rant comes across like an emotional hissy fit…and not great timing when we had the savage murderer of Catherine Gowing locked up for 37 years herein Wales, The facts and research in criminology clearly show that men are the greatest perpetrators of crime and against women in particular. That is a sad fact based on hard fact. I am doing a doctorate in Criminology in Wales.

Gerard, I do not think that anyone tries to deny the fact that statistically men are the greater perpetrators of crime (well, at least what our society recognise as crime). It is the preconceived collective guilt of that is transferred upon all men is the issue here. Good luck with your doctorate in Criminology, at least you did not choose Gender studies.

In support of what you have written Bock, a trend I have noticed a lot in the last ten to fifteen years, is how Mothers and women generally are saying that boys are “slower” than girls.

Slower is the PC version of thicker, of course. It is a sexist put-down but coming from a Mother as some kind of accepted fact, belies the reality of the sexes. Boys are not thicker but they are different than girls. Seen through the mature female eye, boys do not display the same levels of sensitivity or craftiness as young girls do and I believe this is what they are being damned for.

Seen through the mature male eyes though, girls appear pathetic at contact sports, afraid to get their hands dirty, will never let you out in traffic and seem to believe the skinnier they are the more attractive they become. But, I do not find in the company of men, that we refer to then as “slow.” Difficult perhaps, sometimes hard to fathom, but not the broad stroke of slowness.

Young boys today will grow up with precisely the resentments and annoyance you have written so well about. Young teenage men are already committing suicide in worrying numbers and it could just be that this damning indictment of them as thick, could be playing a part. Fragile egos are easily destroyed and when your own Mother thinks you are a God-love-us, you are off to a very fragile start indeed.